A guide for hosting Fine Arts interns

Internships bridge academia and industry, offering students invaluable work experience while enriching their academic learning. As a partner organization, hosting a Concordia intern is an opportunity to tap into fresh talent, innovative ideas, and discipline-specific skills while contributing to training the next generation of professionals in your field. By hiring Concordia interns, you directly support the university’s strategic vision for experiential learning and gain tangible benefits for your organization.

Hosting an intern is a strategic way to support emerging talent while gaining immediate value for your team. Interns bring fresh perspectives, academic knowledge, and innovative ideas that can support projects, tackle challenges, and energize your workplace.

However, without clear guidance, supervisors may face challenges in balancing mentorship with day-to-day responsibilities. This guide is designed to simplify the process and equip you with the tools needed to foster a productive and positive experience for you and your intern by helping you:

• Clarify roles and expectations for both supervisors and interns
• Streamline onboarding and training
• Provide effective coaching, feedback, and professional development
• Navigate mid-point and final evaluations
• Identify opportunities for future collaboration

Concordia University’s Faculty of Fine Arts is home to innovative emerging artists, designers, performers, and cultural workers. By hiring our interns, you gain access to talented, bilingual students across a range of disciplines—from visual arts and design to theatre, film, music, and art education.

Industry, community, and other partners benefit from better-prepared graduates who enter the workforce and the world, and benefit from increased access to talent, resources, and state-of-the-art knowledge that students apply to help solve their problems, including:

• Access to talent pipelines: Interns bring energy, up-to-date academic knowledge, and a willingness to contribute to projects with high impact.

• Recruitment advantages: Many organizations use internships as a proven way to identify and train future full-time hires.

• New perspectives: Students often challenge conventional approaches with creative, research-informed solutions.

• Benefit financially: Take advantage of potential provincial tax credits and subsidies, reducing up to 40% of the intern’s salary and training expenses.

• Elevate your organization's profile: Increase visibility within the arts community by collaborating with Concordia's vibrant network.

The Faculty of Fine Arts is committed to fostering a dynamic and engaging internship program that bridges academic learning with professional practice. Our vision is to nurture creative, skilled, and adaptable students ready to make meaningful contributions to the arts sector and beyond once they graduate. 

Our faculty will help you create internship experiences that allow students to: 

• Apply classroom knowledge in professional settings.
• Develop industry-specific technical and soft skills (e.g., collaboration, project management).
• Build a professional network and portfolio.
• Reflect critically on their artistic practice and career trajectory

While site supervisors play a vital role in shaping meaningful internship experiences, they may encounter a range of logistical and relational challenges. From balancing time constraints to aligning expectations, these hurdles can impact the overall success of the internship.

We hope this guidebook helps address some of these challenges by offering practical tools and clear guidance to support a smoother experience for all parties involved. Ultimately, strong collaboration among students, faculty, staff, and site supervisors is essential to creating rewarding and impactful internships.

Some common challenges: 

• Interns may arrive without a clear understanding of the organization’s needs or expectations. 
• Differences in work culture, terminology, or expectations (e.g., feedback or professionalism) can cause misunderstandings. 
• Understanding the university’s administrative processes, learning objectives, and reporting requirements can be complex. 
• Site supervisors may be unsure how to evaluate an intern’s performance or structure of reflective tasks. 

• We have created guidebooks for site supervisors, students, and faculty & staff members to facilitate consistent understanding of expectations and share best practices in effective internship experiences.
• Our faculty is committed to supporting both interns and partner organizations through structured guidance, regular check-ins, and open communication channels. 
• We ensure alignment of academic and professional objectives to maximize the internship experience.
• The faculty may provide resources (e.g., learning agreements, evaluations) to structure the internship. 
• Open communication between partners, students, and faculty is encouraged to address challenges.

To ensure a successful internship, it's essential to clearly define and communicate the roles and responsibilities of all parties involved: the student, the university, and the host organization. Normally, these responsibilities should be understood by all stakeholders before the internship begins.

Interns are typically supervised by full-time faculty members, often overseen by roles such as the Graduate Program Director or Undergraduate Program Director. Any exceptions to this supervision require the Dean's approval.  

A structured evaluation and conclusion help you close the intern’s work effectively while reinforcing their learning through concrete feedback. This process ensures a meaningful reflection on the intern’s growth, contributions, and areas for further development.

Below, you’ll find links to evaluation forms to guide this process:

Talk to the supervising faculty member to provide feedback for the program if there is anything the university could improve in terms of preparation, communication, or support. Feel free to reach out to us if you’re interested in continuing to host interns and becoming one of our partner organizations.